Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Paul Atkins has fast-tracked a rulemaking that would give companies the option to skip providing quarterly reports and instead report semi-annually. However, at recent conferences, experts—including former SEC officials in accounting roles—say that this transition will not be as easy as flipping a switch and simply discarding quarterly reports.
There are other considerations that might not have been obvious when President Trump, for the second time around, suggested the SEC reduce the frequency of reporting.
Diana Stoltzfus, a former SEC deputy chief accountant who is now a national office partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, said that companies will need to consider the industry they are in and assess how important quarterly reporting is for that sector.
“What will your peers be doing? I think if companies find that a lot of their peers are putting out information, that they’ll feel some pressure, too,” she said at the 2025 Corporate Financial Reporting Insights conference hosted by the Financial Executives International on November 12.
“I think it’s also talking with their different investor groups. What are investor expectations around information? And then thinking too about other SEC rules and reporting requirements, and the interaction between those,” she added.
Stoltzfus said companies are also thinking about the processes and controls that they already have in place for quarterly reporting. “Do they want to make changes to that?”
In addition, companies have different governance structures.
“How are their governance bodies, the audit committees, others thinking about the frequency of reporting and the importance. So, I think a lot of conversations are taking place around it,” she said.
Jonathan Wiggins, who also served as a deputy chief accountant at the SEC, said that changing the frequency of reporting sounds simple on the surface, but it is not in practice.
“Once you change to have optional quarterly reporting, it impacts so many other things throughout the SEC space that they have to consider,” said Wiggins, who is now a partner and deputy chief accountant in the National Professional Standards Group at RSM US LLP.
Chris Hatto, chief accounting officer of General Motors, agreed.
“There seems to be a consensus, at least amongst very large companies, that we would want to continue to do something… so what disclosure control processes do you run? What do you have your auditors do? There’s no financial statements, so they can’t issue a review report. What about comfort letters, stale financial statements, 10b5-1 [stock selling] plans,” he said. “This touches so many different things.”
At another conference in early November where GM’s Hatto also spoke, he explained that most large companies would continue to do some sort of quarterly earnings releases. But there are a lot of questions about what information would be included in an earnings release.
“We run our disclosure control process every quarter. Would you continue to run that?” he said at the 57th annual Institute on Securities Regulation hosted by the Practising Law Institute on November 5 in New York.
He explained that as a big company, GM has an effective disclosure controls process.
“And the good thing is, nothing comes as a surprise out of it, because we run a really robust disclosure control process, and you don’t want to bring the CEO a surprise in that meeting,” he said. “And I think you need to consider those things when you’re in the context of your earnings and what you’re going to say.”
Moreover, he said, “I work for General Motors. If Ford decides they want to do an earnings call, we’re going to do an earnings call.”
Mark Kronforst, Americas director of SEC regulatory matters at Ernst & Young LLP who previously served as the chief accountant of the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance (CorpFin), said if he were at the SEC, he would start thinking about what happens next “because it is not as easy as just pulling Q1 and Q3 out and then moving on with life.”
For example, if the two quarterly reports are pulled, then “what other parts of the rules just broke?” he asked.
He would also think about alternative paths if comment letters do not show support for a switch. To get a win for the SEC staff, he said he would also “look at, okay, well, how do we reduce the burdens of quarterly reporting for everyone anyway if that part doesn’t get through. What can we do on the 10-Q? Certainly, there are areas that probably could be reduced; some of the burden could be taken out of the system, I think, for that reporting anyway.”
Lindsay McCord, an assurance partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP who also previously served as the chief accountant in CorpFin, said another important consideration is the transition plan if the rule is adopted. The SEC is expected to issue a proposal in the coming months.
“Is this now an election, and how do you transition from one to the other and message it to the investors? Because that could really take a hit on your stock all of a sudden if you change something,” she said.
While smaller companies might want to switch immediately, larger companies might want to let investors know in advance.
“Everyone’s thinking, ‘oh yeah, this would be immediate.’ Is that actually the right answer if you want more to take advantage of it, versus giving people time to plan with their investors,” she said. “You want not to have the market volatility for adoption of a rule.”
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